Thursday, February 23, 2012

Dueling at Daytona

Thursday is a big day for SPEED as the network gets to cover two Sprint Cup Series races, even though they are not for points. The highlight of the day are the Gatorade Duels. There is, however, lots of other TV surrounding those two sprint races.

ESPN2 slips into action with 10AM coverage of the Nationwide Series practice. That will put Allen Bestwick, Dale Jarrett and Andy Petree back on the air. Jarrett will later be joined by Ray Evernham and Nicole Briscoe for a post-duel edition of NASCAR Now on ESPN2 at 5:30PM.

The spotlight shines squarely on SPEED as the network kicks things off at noon ET with a one-hour telecast of the Camping World Truck series practice. This will be a first look at the cast of characters fans will see on SPEED this season. In the TV booth it's going to be Rick Allen and Phil Parsons. Ray Dunlap and Hermie Sadler will handle the reporting duties.

Next up at 1PM is a one-hour edition of RaceDay that serves as the preview show for the duels. John Roberts hosts with with the full RaceDay crew of Kenny Wallace, Larry McReynolds and Kyle Petty on the SPEED stage. Wendy Venturini, Matt Clark and Rutledge Wood are the reporters.

Krista Voda looks awfully good in the Hollywood Hotel and she will once again host the pre-race show for the duels with Jeff Hammond from that location. Mike Joy, Darrell Waltrip and Larry McReynolds will call the race from the TV booth. Steve Byrnes and Dick Berggren are the pit road reporters.

SPEED will air the duels live at 2PM and then replay them both starting at 8PM ET. There is no other scheduled re-air, so set the DVR.

Post-race both TV partners will go head-to-head. SPEED will offer Victory Lane while ESPN2 offers NASCAR Now both at 5:30PM. Victory Lane is a signature show for SPEED after every race while NASCAR Now has been struggling with bad timeslots and no re-airs for two years now. Roberts, Petty and Hammond will handle Victory Lane with Wendy Venturini and Bob Dillner as the reporters.

The telecast day wraps-up with another Camping World Truck Series practice with Allen, Parsons and Waltrip and 6:30PM. Then, the re-air of the duels follows at 8PM.

Please use this post to offer your TV-related comments as a big day of NASCAR TV rolls by. To add your opinion, just click on the comments button below.

We will also be providing a comment stream on Twitter at twitter.com/thedalyplanet that is always entertaining. We expect many of the TV personalities, reporters and NASCAR officials to take part in that. Have a great Thursday of racing!

49 comments:

The duels are a waste of time now. They used to be important parts of the event, but with all of the guaranteed starting positions, they're just glorified practice sessions now. There are only a small number of teams that it matters to and the rules about who gets in and who doesn't are so complicated that there's no way the TV people are going to be able to explain them to the people watching.

Since when are the Duels arranged by odd and even owner points standing positions instead of qualifying speed? Duel 1 is all odd-number owner points, except for polesitter Edwards, who was number 2 in points but won the pole, meaning the slowest car that would have raced in Duel 1 is going to race in Duel 2 instead.

I thought NASCAR was working on clarifying its rules. I don't even know when this one came into place. I greatly preferred having all the cars with an odd qualifying rank in Duel 1 and all the cars with an even number in Duel 2.

I'm really excited for the Duels themselves, though. I missed them last year, and I'll at least be able to catch Duel 1 this year and most of Duel 2, depending on the race pace. When's the green flag supposed to drop for Duel 1, and how long is the break between the two?

Yeah Nascar gives the cup teams so much practice and poor Truck Series & NW series drivers are hardly seen this week. And I just heard that TS is going to be the in-car reporter for the NW race. What a shame!

I will be at race today. I am heading into the speedway now. Won't be able to comment on the tv coverage but i will have headphones and scanner tuned to the tv frequency so i can listen to the race telecast on speed while watching live. I am going to follow this blog and twitter on my iphone. Weather is warm. Hoping for an underdog to race into the 500.

I like the idea of qualifying races, although I wish there weren't so many cars locked in and so few for whom it really matters. I recall hearing the IRL is going to try it a couple of times this year.

I'd like to see longer races broken into two qualifying races and a shorter main event with smaller fields. Take Darlington, for example. Instead of 500 miles, run two qualifiers at 75 or 100 miles each, and move 20 cars from each to a 250 or 300 mile 'A-Main'.

I'm getting better at reading the Capcha words. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad one.

Fortunately the car turned itself around to where she hit on the passenger side. Head on or left corner or driver's side would of really been horrid!

I was tending to my laundry and missed some of the after coverage. I know with Danica's crash I never heard them say who transfered. I was really surprised when Krista put up the graphic that Robby transfered in! Had they said that before? Did they ever interview the two transferees? (and what happened to Trevor?)

Thank god for MRN streaming! I got to listen to the end of duel #1 as I rode home in my car.Excellent, professional broadcasting.

Now I'm watching SPEED and just annoyed. It's the freakin' Darrell Waltrip Show featuring some play-by-play by Mike Joy. Just like the Bud Shootout, the booth conversation is disconnected from the race as DW moves his jaw. I've tried to start the year with a fresh look at FOX, but this is frustrating.

I'm not sure what Speed's problem is today. The garbled audio and pixelation is driving me crazy! (And yes, it is going to be a short trip!) I don't think it is Solar Flares. So far, no peaks reported today.

The audio problems again are on Victory Lane too. Odd that out of the blue, Mikey would go into the Hollywood Hotel and Hammond would disappear. No one knew until now that he was doing Victory Lane. You would think SPEED would mention that. Wish they had all the problems on any other day except for today.

I think everything is in full gear now. Race 1 was great listening to the live stream as with race two. Really stunned there wasn't more accidents in race two. Money is the ford camp for Sunday. Even Stenhouse ran strong

Great. Both the blabbering idiots missed the race. Now we can listen to the Kenny and Michael blabber blabber blabber. Nascar, the only sport where you can do nothing in a career and they'll document it in 1080p. Welcome to cup Danica. Fox booth=numbskulls.

Has anyone seen the Kenny Wallace "all access" special? I watched 5 min and deleted from DVR. Too much. Between him and MW not making the race today, I thought I would start singing "Don't Cry for me Argentina". OMG. Otherwise coverage and the races were good. I'm glad racing is back.

Fox/Speed is still having problems covering the race finishes.Did anyone notice the poor camera angle at the finish line of the Bud Shootout? It wasn't until the replay that we saw KB in front of Stewart.Today's 1st race was over for almost 10 minutes before we learned McDowell and Robby transferred.